Theater review: 'Casa Valentina'

From left, Nick Westrate, John Cullum, Gabriel Ebert and Tom McGowan as the feminine versions of their characters in "Casa Valentina."

This is gender-bender week on Broadway.

On Tuesday night, Neil Patrick Harris opened as a transgender woman in "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," and tonight, Alan Cumming will reprise his androgynous Emcee in the opening of the "Cabaret" revival.

There is, also, Harvey Fierstein's play "Casa Valentina," which opened Wednesday night at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, and is positively mainstream compared to the other two.

It's about ordinary heterosexual men who like to dress up as women.

Basing his characters on the actual patrons of a Catskills bungalow colony in the early 1960s, Fierstein doesn't seem quite sure what to do with them, so he tries out several different approaches.

We first see them as innocents in their own Garden of Eden. These men, from all walks of life, feel the urge to express a feminine side by wearing women's outfits. But rather than drag queens, they're like little girls giddily playing dress-up in Mommy's (tasteful) clothes.

The resort is owned by a married couple, Rita (a funny, endearing Mare Winningham), who's sweet and supportive, and her deep-voiced husband George (Patrick Page), who kicks back by putting on a cocktail dress and becoming Valentina.

An additional visitor is Charlotte (Reed Birney), an activist from California who's committed to bringing straight transvestites out of the shadows, and urges the others to become members of a national sorority she's just organized.

Fierstein initially emphasizes the sisterhood the men find together, and the silly fun they enjoy with their harmless fetish. They eagerly give the drab-looking Miranda a makeover, and goofily lip-synch McGuire Sisters records.

And then everything lurches to a halt, for a meeting that's held at the dining room table. Charlotte is making a pitch for her sorority. ("The enemy is secrecy. Remove the veil and remove the danger.")

There's a debate. The others, except for Valentina, who wants to win Charlotte's good will, are understandably dubious. Exposure, they know, will likely ruin their lives and careers. Besides that, they're perfectly content with the way things are.

Some of them are also turned off by Charlotte's rabid anti-homosexuality, a stance she takes, in part, because she believes denouncing gayness will help make the straight men's transvestism more socially acceptable.

Fierstein gets an easy laugh by having her observe, "Fifty years from now, when homosexuals are still scuttling about as the back-alley vermin of society, cross-dressing will be as everyday as cigarette smoking."

By not taking no for an answer, the determined Charlotte precipitates an unpersuasive burst of melodrama, with blackmail and violence.

That leads to the most psychologically interesting part of the evening, as the play, in a turnabout, questions how victim-free the cross-dressing actually is.

Rita comes to understand the extreme narcissism of what the men are doing: The closeness they feel to their invented female selves diminishes their intimacy with their wives.

"I'll always be an outsider," she tells George, "because you [and Valentina] are the perfect couple."

Under the direction of Joe Mantello, the play benefits from superb acting, with each male character creating a strongly individual, convincing female self. Westrate's tough Gloria, Birney's careerist Charlotte and Ebert's awkward Miranda are all particularly vivid.

"Casa Valentina" is very uneven, with abrupt changes in mood, action and attitude. But its illumination of a neglected corner of human activity is diverting, and often thought-provoking.